Decoding The Paris Climate Deal: What Does it Mean?

The world concluded four years of negotiations with the first universal agreement on climate change. Nearly 190 countries pledged national climate action, and all countries agreed a global long-term goal to phase out greenhouse gas emissions this century, suggesting a turning point in the use of fossil fuels

The Paris outcome has two parts.

1. A 12-page “Paris Agreement”, which sets out new commitments for climate action beyond 2020, and potentially through this century.
2. A 20-page “Decision”, which describes what countries have to do before the Agreement enters into force in 2020.

Following is an attempt to decipher what all the wonky language means.

A legally binding agreement

The Paris Agreement is legally binding. The Decision states that it “decides to adopt” the Paris Agreement, under the 1992 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (Paragraph 1). It uses the critical language, “entry in force” (Paragraph 8), which signals that countries consent to be bound by it under international law. And in the Paris Agreement, Articles 20 and 21 made it clear that this is a legally binding document, “subject to ratification, acceptance or approval” (Article 20.1). The Paris Agreement will come into force when at least 55 countries accounting for at least 55 percent of total, global greenhouse gas emissions have approved it (Article 21.1).

However, domestic, national climate action targets are not included in the Paris Agreement. Countries have a legally binding obligation to put together domestic targets (called nationally determined contributions, NDCs), and prepare policies to achieve these (Article 4.2). But the targets themselves are in a “public registry” separate to the Agreement (Article 4.12). Some countries, led by the European Union, had wanted national targets to be legally binding, inserted into the agreement. But that was always unlikely: it would have made the Agreement more subject to parliamentary approval, giving the U.S. Senate the chance to reject it.

Preamble of Agreement

Both documents have an initial “preamble” of non-binding paragraphs which reveal some of the pinch-points in the negotiations. The Agreement preamble acknowledges the importance of a “just transition of the workforce”, for example to help coal mining communities adjust to a low-carbon transition. It also refers to the importance of protecting “Mother Earth”, favoured by Bolivia, which has previously tried to blocked UN climate agreements. And it recognises that “sustainable lifestyles” are important to tackle climate change, which India will like, to remind everyone that it has much lower, per capita carbon emissions than the developed world.

Temperature target

The global long-term goal of the Agreement is to limit global average warming to “well below” 2 degrees Celsius (2C), above pre-industrial levels (Article 2). That is an advance on the non-binding, Cancun Agreement in 2010, which aimed to hold warming to “below 2C”. The Agreement also aims “to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5C”.

The temperature target was a big issue in Paris. Scientists say that at 2C warming, there’s a greater chance that polar ice sheets will melt more, faster. The Greenland icesheet alone contains enough ice to raise global sea levels by seven metres. Not surprisingly, some low-lying and small island states supported a more ambitious limit of 1.5C. But some fossil fuel producers, notably Saudi Arabia, opposed that. Global temperatures have already risen by 1C; limiting warming to 1.5C would imply rapid cuts in carbon emissions and use of fossil fuels.

Source: Climate Change News

Taxonomy

• Climate Change
• Climate Change Adaptation
• Governance & Planning